The word 'pregnant' entered English in the early fifteenth century from Latin 'praegnāns' (also spelled 'praegnās'), meaning 'with child.' The most widely accepted etymology derives the Latin word from 'prae-' (before) combined with the root of 'gnāscī' or 'nāscī' (to be born), giving a literal sense of 'in the state before birth.' The PIE root underlying 'gnāscī' is *ǵenh₁-, meaning 'to give birth, to beget,' one of the most productive roots in the Indo-European family.
The root *ǵenh₁- generated an extraordinary family of English words, all connected to birth and origin. Through Latin 'nāscī' (to be born), English received 'native' (born in a place), 'nascent' (being born, emerging), 'nature' (inborn quality, from 'nātūra'), 'nation' (those born together, a people), 'natal' (relating to birth), 'innate' (inborn), and 'renaissance' (rebirth). Through Latin 'genus' (birth, race, kind), it gave 'genus,' 'genre,' 'gender,' 'general,' 'generate,' 'generous,' 'genius,' and 'genuine.' Through Greek
Before 'pregnant' became standard, English had several other terms for the condition. Old English used 'mid cilde' (with child) or 'bearnēacen' (child-increased). Middle English added 'great with child' and 'enceinte' (borrowed from French). 'With child' remained the most common expression through the sixteenth century and appears frequently in the King James
There is a curious homonymic coincidence in English: a second word 'pregnant' exists, meaning 'compelling, cogent, significant,' as in Shakespeare's 'how pregnant sometimes his replies are' (Hamlet, 2.2). This second 'pregnant' has an entirely different origin — it comes from Old French 'preignant,' the present participle of 'preindre' (to press, to squeeze), from Latin 'premere.' The two words 'pregnant' are etymologically unrelated, having converged to identical spelling and pronunciation from different Latin sources. The 'compelling' sense
The verb 'impregnate' (to make pregnant; to saturate) entered English in the seventeenth century, from Late Latin 'impraegnāre.' It has maintained both a literal biological sense and a figurative sense of filling or saturating something ('impregnated with resin'). The noun 'pregnancy' dates from the sixteenth century.
Social and linguistic taboos around pregnancy have produced an unusually rich vocabulary of euphemisms across English history. Besides the terms already mentioned, English has used 'expecting,' 'in a family way,' 'in a delicate condition,' 'with a bun in the oven,' and many others. The clinical directness of 'pregnant' itself was sometimes avoided in polite speech through the nineteenth century, with 'expecting' or 'in a condition' preferred. The twentieth century largely